Latest Telepresence and Visual Collaboration News:Main News Feed

When it comes to video conferencing these days, virtual meeting rooms, mobile and desktop clients, cost-effective cloud services, and similarly democratizing solutions are in. Super big systems that deliver a super quality experience at super crazy prices are out. Or are they?

If you go by the numbers, things look pretty gloomy for immersive telepresence solutions, those high-end systems that use HD video, life-size images, just-so lighting, and custom furniture to create the illusion that all participants are in the same conference room. While Ovum doesn't do forecasts of communications systems, some of my friends at rival analyst firms do. IDC analyst Rich Costello, for instance, said in December 2014 that multicodec telepresence equipment revenue was down nearly 16% year over year. Earlier in 2014 the numbers were even less kind, with the estimated year-over-year decline ranging from just over 26% to nearly 35% depending at which quarter you look.

The familiar cartoon meme where an angel sits on someone's shoulder and a devil on another, both giving advice in the person's ear is one we all know. But what if you were able to have a real adviser sitting on your shoulder while learning a new task that not only offered advice but oversaw and guided your actions as well? The Grasp telespresence robot is designed to do just that.

While we struggle to set up a group Skype chat and create Google Sheets to organize our list of Google Docs, a new generation of venture-backed startups are building new tools to change the way we collaborate.

Investors are more excited about teamwork tech than ever. According to CrunchBase data, collaboration tech companies raised nearly $1 billion in venture funding in 2014 -- a 65% jump from 2013's total of $547 million. Last quarter's $333 million is by far the highest amount of capital committed in a single quarter to date.

When I opened my eyes I suddenly found myself in an art gallery that had been transformed into a full-blown party with thumping music, bright red helium balloons pulling at the furniture, and a menagerie of life forms, humanoid and fantastical, chatting and flitting about.

I spotted the champagne table and meandered towards it through the crowd, being careful to avoid bumping into anybody. Amused that the creators had allowed my avatar to initiate a drinking motion, I quickly slammed a few gulps chuckling at the absurdity of what was all around me.

Virtual reality can make you feel like you're high atop the Wall in Westeros, flying like a bird, or running from an alien intent on killing you, but to everyone else, you look like a spaz flailing about in high-tech ski googles. This makes demonstrating a head-mounted display like the Oculus Rift difficult in a group setting. You can set up a monitor that displays what you're seeing, but the result is an underwhelming pair of screenshots. Hardly the immersive experience VR promises.

That's the insight behind a slick projector called Immersis that demonstrates the panoramic power of VR en masse.

The SED-E1 transparent-lens headset will go on sale in eight more countries--Japan, the U.S., France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden--next month. Developers can access the official version of the SmartEyeglass SDK today.

Not like taking a few jumps on a raked path in the woods behind my house like I used to do as a kid--I mean really mountain biking, the kind of thing you'd see on a GoPro commercial. The kind of thing that would almost certainly result in my death if I tried it without practice. Thanks to a motion bike and a VR headset, I got to taste the thrill without the risk. But can I really say "I went mountain biking"?

First, let's talk about the setup. I was riding Activetainment's B\01 bike which actuates forward and backward based on incline and has pedals, gears, and software-controlled resistance, meaning it can make it hard to pedal as I'm going uphill and easy when going downhill, you know... like a real bike. You can also lean left and right into turns... as you would on a real bike. The company teamed up with MTB Freeride, an in-development mountain biking game that's actually rather gorgeous and aims for realistic riding physics.

Here is a video overview of the Prysm Collaboration Room solutions that also has the best visualizations of Anacore Synthesis running on the wall. Anacore is the hardware and software engine that powers the Prysm walls. Prysm bought the company in June of 2014 and has been accelerating the company's development. The software manages content delivered to the wall and provides the collaborative tools to mirror the content on other Prysm walls and flat panels (65inch and 85inch) around the world. The software also provides workflow tools that allow you to set up presentations, dashboards, and other content, do collaborative work, close it down and pick up where you left off next week in any Anacore enabled room. Anacore Synthesis can run on other multi-touch enabled displays as well as Prysm's walls and panels.

Ajit Pai, the sole Republican Commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), inferred in a Tweet that President Barack Obama's secret, 332-page "Net Neutrality" document is a scheme for federal micro-managing of the Internet to extract billions in new taxes from consumers and again enforce progressives' idea of honest, equitable, and balanced content fairness.

Video conferencing companies have attracted millions of dollars in venture capital, as everyone from startups to large established companies like Cisco Systems Inc.CSCO -1.59% try to make this technology work in the cloud.

Add to the mix Zoom Video Communications Inc., which has raised another $30 million to combine Web conferencing and video conferencing into what its investors say is one of the fastest-growing business software companies yet.

HACKENSACK, N.J. - February 4, 2014 - Vidyo, Inc., ended its fiscal 2014 year on January 31, 2015 and announced significant growth driven by strong market demand and the appointment of Eran Westman, as President and Chief Executive Officer of Vidyo, succeeding co-founder Ofer Shapiro, effective immediately. Westman previously held the role of Chief Revenue Officer. Shapiro assumes the role of Vice Chairman and will continue to help guide the company he has led since founding it in 2005. Vidyo also announced that Guy Resheff has joined the company as Chief Technology Officer to lead the technology and product teams.

Imago ScanSource has announced a new distribution agreement with Ashton Bentley. Ashton Bentley specialises in creating an 'integrated VC system in-a-box', which is simple for customers to deploy and use. Each unified system combines a core video conferencing engine based on the customer's choice of manufacturer.

MUV Interactive, a developer of intuitive interaction technology solutions that enable displayed content to be utilized from anywhere in a room, showcased its flagship product, bird™, for a new immersive and engaging classroom interactivity experience, at Bett 2015, the world's leading learning technology event. bird™ enables educators to interact with their students from anywhere in the classroom, while simultaneously controlling courseware content that can be projected on any surface.

No, that's not a fancy coffee canteen--it's the Logitech ConferenceCam Connect. Logitech unveils today its new HD 1080p camera, billing it as an all-in-one video collaboration solution for groups of one to six people.

Essentially, it's for huddle groups that don't want to literally huddle in front of a laptop to video conference. They don't have to with this camera, given its 90-degree field of view, wireless screen-mirror projection to any nearby monitor and ability to work with most any device thrown at it (through Bluetooth or USB). The ConferenceCam also doesn't hog up the bandwidth of whatever laptop is hosting it--its on-board encoding processes the video inside the camera for a smoother video stream. And Logitech touts the camera's echo and noise-cancelling technology to help the acoustics sound fairly lifelike within a 12-foot diameter.

LAS VEGAS -- Nestled between two false walls in a lavish suite at the Venetian hotel and casino is what I think is an enormous television. Here, during the chaos of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in early January, too-large TVs are par for the course.

When Marty McFly traveled forward in time to 2015 in the 1989 film Back to the Future II, one of the technological marvels he found in the future was 3D glasses. In the movie, they were manufactured by JVC, but Microsoft hopes to make them a reality here in the real world.